America's Lost Black Towns Vol. 1 — Texas: Built From Freedom (Standard Companion Edition — Interactive Edition)

In the summer of 1865, nearly a thousand freedpeople walked down San Felipe Road and built a city of their own on the bank of Buffalo Bayou — Freedmen's Town, Houston, where residents bought and laid their own brick streets because the city would not, and pooled $800 to buy Emancipation Park seven years after emancipation. A generation later, Black families north of downtown voted Independence Heights into existence — the first Black municipality in Texas, with its own mayors — then voted to join Houston on promises of services that never came. And in Austin, Charles Clark bought two acres for $100 in 1871 and founded Clarksville, a freedom colony the city's own 1928 master plan then set out, in its own written words, to empty. Three Texas towns, three different instruments of erasure — demolition, annexation, and a written plan — told from the documents: the 1984 National Register nomination (568 structures; about 50 remain), the 1914 incorporation petition, and the master plan itself. Contested numbers are printed with their sources; oral tradition is printed as what it is — a primary source — with the museum, church, or community that carries it named every time.

Inside the Interactive Edition: the complete book — all 3 chapters, full text · Recorded narration by Marcus (the Digital Black Voice narration voice) — 28.5 minutes, every chapter read aloud · Four layers per town: Then/Now, the Document, Map/Deeds, and Oral History with its carriers named · A chronological timeline that jumps to the chapter behind each date · A 10-question educator quiz drawn strictly from the text · Every chapter closes with its Receipts — the documents, counts, and oral traditions the story stands on · For educators: a TEKS correlation sheet for this volume is available with the Lost Black Towns educator materials — audited against the finished text and the adopted Texas standards, claiming only what the sheet claims. These materials make classrooms eligible, not district-adopted.